Fear of the flames
by chloemcg
Summary: Two-shot. Fathers day fic. Since becoming frightened after seeing Natsu in a terrifying form, Nashi becomes scared of her father. Its up to Natsu to mend the bond between him and his young daughter but will he succeed or will his own child be frightened of him forever?
1. The scare

**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone from the Fairy tail franchise, maybe except for Nashi.**

**Fear of the flames**

* * *

It was a fun day at the Fairy tail guild.

It had been a few months since Nashi's very first visit to the guild and ever since her parents had made it a point to bring her there constantly, even if they were still a tad shaken due to Ivan's cowardly kidnapping attempt.

It was a sunny day in Magnolia and everyone was really happy to be spending it indoors since they had decided to spend this sweltering summer day in the guildhall to cool off a bit; they would have gone into the pool but they couldn't due to a few issues with algae somehow swarming in the water and no one wanted to even go near that —no matter how hot it was.

Lucy Heartfilia, wife to Natsu Dragneel, the guild's Celestial wizard, was sat at a table with Levy, Erza, Juvia, Wendy and Carla with her daughter Nashi sat on her lap.

"I can't believe how much Nashi's grown, Lucy!" Levy exclaimed, gesturing to the fidgeting infant on Lucy's knees.

Lucy smiled down at her daughter.

"I know. It seems that she inheriting her father's bottomless pit of a stomach has been a good thing in her case."

The baby girl in question had (indeed) grown quite a bit and had been dressed in a pretty pink dress that had a bit of frumpy lacing, she had even grown in a single fang in her otherwise gummy mouth. She could be nice and sensible at times, like her mother, but also had inherited her father's daredevil streak. She loved her mother and father respectively and loved spending time with them...however, she was growing bored with just sitting on her mother's lap and listening to some boring stuff.

Juvia smiled too, rubbing her stomach which was a bit swollen. She hadn't been pregnant with Gray's child for too long but she was relishing every moment of it and, no matter how horrible she felt at times because of it, she could never be happier then she was to be with the man she loved and then carrying the child of said man.

"I just wonder if my baby will become just as hungry as Nashi?"

Levy nodded in agreement but she couldn't help but give a forlorn sigh as she rested her cheek against her hand. Her brown eyes were very saddened and her blue hair was slightly more wavier than normal and tied up into a ponytail. She sighed with annoyance.

"I'm still trying to hint to Gajeel that I wanna get married and have kids already, we've been dating long enough."

Nashi had finally enough of this.

She was getting more and more bored by the second but Nashi could hear her father's voice coming out the back door and she couldn't keep a large smile off of her face. Perhaps she could go find him and they could have some fun together, he always picked her up and gave her snuggles whenever he saw her. He loved her daddy so much, he always gave her every ounce of love he had.

So, when nobody was looking, the pink-haired infant hopped off of her mother's lap and plopped down to the ground.

Nobody even noticed her as she shuffled off.

Nashi crawled out the front door, giggling and gurgling all the way as she shuffled through the grass of the courtyard that also doubled as the back garden. She was pretty lost amidst the grass and flowers. She wasn't much used to traversing along ground that was not carpet or a stable ground. She could feel the sun on her back and the wild bristle her wisps of salmon pink hair.

Her eyes lit up the second she spotted her father, he had his back turned to her and he obviously hadn't spotted her quite yet as she kept right on crawling through the grass in an effort to reach the grown up pink-haired fire wizard.

As she drew closer and closer to him, she stopped when she noticed something was off.

She stopped gurgling and cooing and just stared at her father in pure confusion.

"Ahhh...?"

Natsu hadn't noticed Nashi and stood in front of Gray with flames licking at his sides and a menacing look fixed upon his face.

The fire wizard's posture was as stiff and he glared (literally) scorching daggers at the ice mage. That wasn't all but fire, as well as lightning, was flaring around him and sparking in the air. It made Natsu's aura all the more electrifying. He gnashed his fangs angrily and his scarf fluttered in the wind as he stood face-to-face with his rival; Gray stood opposite of him with half of his body covered in black markings and light blue smogs of ice steamed from around him as sheers of ice coated the ground around him.

"YOU'LL PAY FOR MAKING FUN OF ME, FROSTY!" Natsu roared, the electricity amplifying his voice.

Without another word, Natsu lunged at Gray with a flaming/electrical fist and punched him square in the face.

The impact caused Gray to fly backwards a few feet or two until he landed on both feet and forcefully dug his heels in the ground to stop himself from skidding further and he scowled darkly at Natsu. He had activated his Demon slayer form but tried to tone his powers down to avoid hurting his friend/brotherly-figure. He didn't even know how Natsu had managed to swallow the electricity from the nearby power lines anyway...let alone mix it with his normal fiery powers.

"Natsu, will you stop this!? I was joking!" The ice-make wizard yelled angrily but calmly, trying to calm Natsu down from his overpowered state, "You need to learn to take a joke, flame brain!"

"WHAT DID YOU JUST CALL MEEEEEE!?" He shrieked, clearly even more enraged from earlier.

Gray's face paled.

He clearly made things worse.

"Oh for the love of-!"

Before he could finish what he was about to say, he watched as Natsu leapt high into the air above him and took a deep breath inwards in preparation to launch an attack, unaware of the fact that the small observer a few yards away was beginning to huff and sniffle, opened his mouth and exclaimed powerfully as he watched Gray look up at him with worry and just a twinge of fear.

**"LIGHTNING FLAME DRAGON ROOOOOOOOOOOOOAR!"**

He exhumed a huge amount of flames that were covered in live lightning bolts, the sound of his shout caused even the grass to stand on end due to the electricity he was firing from his mouth. He watched with wild jade green eyes as Gray made it so his arm was covered in ice before he blocked the attack with quite a bit of difficulty despite how fluidly he'd done it.

Natsu and Gray kept right on attacking each other since the latter didn't appear to be the slightest bit affected by the barrage of electrifying flames that was just aimed at him and, unbeknownst to them both, however, Nashi had finally had enough and practically _exploded _into a series of shrieks and cries that mashed together in a bawl so hysterical that one would think that a murder was going on.

Natsu didn't even hear it despite his sensitive sense of hearing.

Nashi started to bawl and cry as loud as her little lungs would allow.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

* * *

_Meanwhile..._

Happy had been watching the fight from above with worry.

The blue exceed, in some way, had never liked watching Natsu and Gray fighting so viciously; their quarrels was always humorous (if not a little bit annoying) to the rest of the guild but Natsu had seemed a little bit on edge lately and so was way more prone to lashing out and one "meant-to-be-joking-comment" from Gray later seemed to pop that cork on the unopened bottle that was Natsu's hot-headed temper.

He flapped his wings to keep an arial surveillance on the fight going on below...but then his ear twitched when he heard a sound.

It was a sound that made his stomach clench.

"Nashi?!"

The blue exceed gasped when he flew as fast as he could towards the source of the ear-piercing sound. His mind raced as fast as his pounding heart as he made his way back towards the guildhall because he had a sickening feeling that he knew what had happened. He didn't want to even dare think that he was correct, though, especially since he thought that it would be awful if he was proven correct.

He was.

Needless to say, he was not very thrilled to see that not only had Nashi (whom he considered his little sister) snuck out of the guildhall without anyone noticing but had also witnessed such a frightening scene.

The poor thing.

She must have saw her own father look like some sort of monster.

Nashi was still a bawling mess as she lifted her head up towards the sky and screeched.

The blue anthropomorphic cat landed right in front of the baby, his wings evaporating into thin air as he looked sympathetically at her. He was just a bit taller than she was and he swished his worm-shaped tail as he frowned gently at her as he moved over towards her. He never liked to see his "little sister" cry and even made it a point to take care of her and even rock her to sleep in her crib at night if Natsu and Lucy were either too busy or too tired to do so.

He wanted the best for her, after all.

Happy felt his heart sink when he looked into Nashi's terrified, tear-filled eyes.

"Aww, Nashi." The exceed cooed softly, reaching forwards and making an attempt to scoop her up. He staggered beneath her weight (not too shocking since she was barely any smaller than he was himself) and rubbing her back in a soothing manner with one of his paws, "It's okay, big brother Happy's here..."

Nashi's cries dwindled into whimpers and sobs as she cuddled herself into Happy's azure blue fur.

This was not a good situation. Clearly the baby had seen something she hadn't meant to and, even though she was a baby, she could still remember this for awhile despite her memory not being the best developed due of her young age. She would surely hold on to the fear she had in those moments and she would be very frightened with Natsu.

Maybe he could take her back to Lucy and she could sort things out.

"C'mon, Nashi. I'll take ya back to your mother,"

Happy sighed as he proceeded to activate his Aera magic once again and took to the air with his passenger fast asleep in his arms. He knew that he needed to talk to Lucy about what had happened because this wasn't a good thing to have happened at all —Happy had been _raised _by Natsu and he was like the father he never had; he couldn't have Nashi being petrified and traumatised by what she witnessed.

He wasn't going to let Nashi be terrified of her own father if he had a say in it.

* * *

**A/N: Here is the first chapter of my Fathers day fic, I'll hopefully get chapter two out shortly.**

**I hope you guys like it.**

**Don't forget to review and fave.**

**-Chloemcg **


	2. The repair of a bond

**Disclaimer: I don't own anyone from the Fairy tail franchise, maybe except for Nashi.**

**Fear of the flames**

* * *

_Later that day..._

Natsu came home to his and Lucy's cottage covered in scorch marks, shards of ice and scratches. He lumbered through the front door, looking fatigued and tired as he walked through the house; each footstep clomped against the floorboards and made his presence known immediately.

He was doing this more out of necessity than out of anger, due to his body feeling so heavy.

"Hey, Lucy, Nashi, Happy! I'm home!"

His shouts was met with a very uncomfortable silence which was enough to make him cringe on the inside; it was quite stifling. He was wondering whether everyone was just becoming deaf or if he was in huge trouble for some reason when he was soon greeted by Happy.

"Hey, little buddy! How're you-"

He was cut off.

"Don't "Hey, little buddy" me, Natsu Dragneel! Do you have any idea what you did!?"

Natsu was both shocked and clueless. What had he done this time? He could tell that it was serious since Happy hardly got cross at him...okay, that wasn't entirely true, sometimes he _did _get cross and they did fight on a not-quite-regular basis but still! He frowned up at the cat hovering over him.

Maybe Happy was having one of his pre-teen mood swings?

"What are you talking about?"

The blue exceed yelled heatedly, "You know full well what I'm talking about!"

The pink-haired fire dragon slayer was totally stupefied as to what was happening right now. He wasn't really sure what was going on here and he was now growing increasingly certain that this _wasn't_ a simple case of exceed teenage rage. He opened his mouth to ask again what was going on and why he was angry with him when Happy snapped, effectively cutting him off again.

"Because of what you did your own daughter doesn't want to see you and-"

Natsu's mind was racing now. What did he do? Why didn't his baby daughter want to see him? He and her always had fun together! What was going on? Why was he going through this lecture when he had a rough enough day already? He was already tired after eating that lightning and wasting a lot of his magical power on that fight and he didn't think he needed to deal with this.

Before Happy could berate him further though, Lucy's voice sliced in the middle of it and called down as she emerged from the nursery.

"Happy, that's enough. I'll handle this."

Lucy sounded scarily patient as she silently glared at Natsu, leaving the dragon slayer practically quaking in his sandals. His scarf quivered along with him as Happy harrumphed and left the room to go into his own bedroom and to just leave both the two Fairy Tail wizards to it.

Natsu hardly wasted a moment as he walked up to his wife and started asking her about what had just happened.

"What was Happy talking about? What's going on with her?" Natsu asked, tilting his head to one side with pure confusion written on his face, "Why doesn't Nashi wanna see me?"

Lucy sighed. Of course Natsu would not have been aware of what had happened, he was in the midst of a fight after all and (since he did have the memory similar to a kitchen sieve) was probably just unaware of just how monstrous he had appeared during the aftermath. She decided to be blunt as she placed her hands on her hips and fixed the dragon slayer with a glare so hard that it could curdle the blood of one of Zeref's armies.

"Natsu. You went full 'Lightning flame dragon mode' in front of our baby girl!" She continued on to explain, face growing increasingly stern as the seconds passed, "Happy told me that he found Nashi outside screaming her lungs out, you were too busy fighting with Gray to notice."

Natsu felt as though he'd been smacked in the face.

He had scared his daughter that badly...? He hadn't meant to frighten his daughter, he was just battling with Gray and could just get a bit carried away sometimes when it came to the safety of his family as well as his dignity. He couldn't help but feel like a bad person when he thought on what terror his poor baby girl went through.

But what could he do?

He wasn't used to dealing with problems like this!

Lucy, in the meantime, shook her head with eyes full of concern.

"Nashi's been hiding from me and I can't coax her out. I think you scared her when she saw you in that form. I think you are the only one who can sort this out, since you need to reconcile with her..."

Natsu looked down at himself thoughtfully. What his wife said was true, if this was about what he thought it was then it was more than likely that this was a matter that only the bond between a father and daughter could fix. But how could one make an attempt to reason with a six-month-old? But still...he needed to set things right. He looked back up and nodded in concurrence with the celestial wizard, knowing full well that her words rang true.

He smiled a huge fanged smirk, putting on his best jokester face.

"Okay...alright, I'll go and see if I can make our little girl all smiley again!"

The fire wizard then proceeded to push passed his wife.

Lucy frowned as she watched her husband begin to enter their daughter's nursery and decided that Natsu and Nashi needed some father/daughter bonding time. She thought that perhaps a visit to the guild would benefit her right about now —she didn't plan on doing any solo missions quite yet but she did intend on spending time with the girls such as Levy and Erza.

She headed out the door, Happy in tow, and left Natsu to it.

Natsu had simply nudged the door open with a single push of his hand.

But what he saw made his heart sink.

Nashi had been playing with her blocks but she had tears flowing down her chubby cheeks, her eyes were red and bloodshot. She was sat on the floor and was just being unusually quiet as she seemed to just mind her own business, but she was also very close to her crib —she was probably preparing to dive under there should anyone come in.

Natsu hated to see his daughter look so sad, it broke his heart.

But the second Nashi heard him come in, she started to cry and dove beneath the crib.

Natsu's brain made his legs move before he could even register what was going on.

"No, no, no, no, no! Please, Nash-Nash! Don't hide!"

He just dropped down on all fours on the floor and hastened towards the crib that Nashi had just retreated underneath, observing as the little girl scurried away whilst she wailed as she curled into a ball and got as far as she could go to get away at the fiery dragon slayer. Natsu tilted his head sideways to get a better watchful position and tried to get a look at the little girl a little better and saw that she had took the position of a cornered feral feline and put on the best menacing glare she possibly could.

At the same time, however, the poor child cried with her little throat strained, raw and her tiny voice had become hoarse.

"H-Hey...its alright, Nashi, don't be afraid..." He tried to assure the frightened infant, his voice was hushed and soothing. But the child just whimpered fearfully and backed off a bit more, even more tears streaming down her cheeks.

She obviously didn't believe him.

But that wasn't going to stop Natsu from trying.

"C'mon, it's just daddy! I'm not scary!"

Nothing.

"It's alright, baby girl. Please com-!" He had slowly reached his arm towards the little girl in an attempt to pull her out of hiding. But as he reached in, a sudden sharp pain had bit into his hand. He winced in pain and was forced to withdraw his hand and examine what that pain was.

He was shocked at what he saw.

A bite mark.

Nashi bit him!

The dragon slayer hissed in pain on examining his injuries and, surprisingly, it seemed that this child had a fang in her mouth because it looked like the fang tooth was the one that bit into his skin the most. He quickly started to nurse his injured hand, and he was so angry that his very hair was beginning to steam; but he deeply inhaled in an effort to calm himself.

He couldn't risk yelling at her.

That would make things worse.

Natsu's obsidian eyes were distant and his thoughts were clouded with concern for his baby girl; he had no idea what he could do to try and soothe the terrified young child, especially since it was _him _that she was frightened of. He pondered hard on this and it even made his brain ache just to think so hard. It was so hard it even caused his head to ache like crazy and that made his frustration ever increase —when he thought too hard, it hurt his head and when his head hurt it just made him more annoyed and when he got annoyed he wanted nothing more than to punch the daylights out of something or someone (mostly Gray).

The pink-haired dragon slayer closed his eyes and blew out a frustrated breath and, as he did, he blew a puff of fiery smog and smoke and he could have swore that when he saw the smoke he'd exhumed himself, an lightbulb lit inside his head.

He was raised by the almighty **_fire_** dragon king and his daughter was being raised by the _**fire**_ dragon king's son so maybe if he reminded her of how fire couldn't be too frightening then maybe it could reassure her that her father wouldn't harm her.

A smile made its way across his face and revealed his glinting fangs.

_"Maybe I could try and re-kindle her love for fire and show her it ain't so scary..."_

Natsu shuffled himself around, sat back down on the floor in front of the crib that Nashi had retreated beneath and he held out both of his hands, laying them both down on the ground, and let a small flame ignite in his palms.

It was a small flame that crackled and burned softly.

It wasn't long before Natsu could hear the soft sound of sniffing and he kept his eyes patiently on the small and relatively well-controlled flame crackling in his hands, his expression grew more hopeful. This was promising. He heard as Nashi sniffed at the air once again and proceeded to sneakily and cautiously head in the direction of the small fire. Despite her beautiful brown eyes being glazed over with fear, they almost instantly lit up and a small reluctant smile of delight tugged at the corners of her lips.

Natsu couldn't help but break into a fanged-smirk when he saw his daughter smiling just a bit again.

"You like daddy's flames, huh?" He cooed sweetly.

Nashi froze when she heard her father's voice, her eyes widening and her lower lip quivering as she hid herself a bit more. She seemed to like the gentle warmth those flames provided and the comforting scent of smoke seemed to bring her some more comfort, she also seemed to be indecisive about whether or not to come out of hiding, and she definitely seemed reluctant.

The baby pinkette girl watched the adult fairy tail wizard wearily.

Natsu softened his voice and looked at his small daughter with the saddest and most ashamed expression ever as he gave a forlorn sigh, he closed his eyes and hung his head as he started to speak in a hushed tone of voice. He could feel his heart threatening to crumble and shatter right on the spot but he tried to sound as sincere as possible and to help make her feel better, his voice quivered a bit as he spoke.

"Oh, sweetie...I'm so sorry I scared you. Daddy didn't mean for you to see that, I didn't even count on you being there..."

Natsu felt some tickling behind his eyeballs, announcing a fresh batch of tears.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

He hadn't even notice as he suddenly felt a small weight heft itself on to his folded knees and he looked down and was shocked to find that not only had Nashi come out of hiding but she had also pulled herself on to his lap but was also was looking up at him with worried confusion. It was a look asking "what's wrong?". He felt his heart swell with relief as he reached down and took her into his arms whilst he gingerly readjusted the little one in his arms and held her out in front of him so he could see her face.

Big, fat tears rolled down Nashi's face as she sobbed and sniffled and whimpered softly.

"I'm sorry, Nash-Nash," He smiled softly in an apologetic manner.

A short, ten-second silence had befallen the two until Natsu grinned so wide that it showed off his glisteningly pearly white fangs. He didn't want to linger on making a depressing mood for his daughter to soak in, he was just happy to have her back in his arms again...and accepting it.

"Now, let's wipe those tears away. Can't have those on that cute little face now," He said, a playful tone leaking into his voice.

The girl giggled at the Dragon Slayer's silliness and let him wipe her tearstained cheeks with his thumbs, the way his fingertips brushed against the girl's face was so soft and she bounced herself up and down on her father's strong knee whilst grinning from ear-to-ear.

Natsu cooed goofily as he stuck his tongue out playfully at her, "Whose my lil' munchkin? You're my lil' munchkin! Yes you are!"

Nashi giggled and squealed in delight as Natsu made some "nom, nom, nom" noises with his mouth as he pulled his infant daughter in close and peppered her entire face with loving yet gentle kisses, making playful growling sounds at the same time.

It was good to have a good mood back in the house again.

It didn't take long for Nashi's mood to go down again as she looked down sadly at her father's hand. her eyes watering, and she reached down and used her small chubby hand to rub over the cut that came from her own fang. Her father could sense that she felt bad about biting him on the hand and seeing such a look made Natsu smile sadly at her. He wasn't going to hold this against her since she _was _petrified and she was just acting out of a need to defend herself.

Natsu just shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to tickle the little child playfully.

"Don't worry about it, sweet cheeks. I would've done the same thing."

Nashi giggled and squirmed, trying to move away from the delightful form of torture she was receiving, and she squealed and gurgled in a joyous manner as she perched herself unsteadily on her father's knee whilst she grabbed hold of one of the tails of his scaly scarf. She flung her arms around it, hugging the material as tightly as she could in her little arms, and she looked up silently at him.

Natsu's smile turned into a frown.

Huge, innocent brown eyes bore right into cool, onyx eyes.

The owner of the latter asked, noticing that his daughter had gone quiet, "What is it, Nash-Nash?"

He could see something in her eyes and he couldn't put his finger on it. Was it determination? Or, perhaps, was it resolution? It could have been even interpreted as a unique mix of calculating yet thoughtful. It was a strange thing but Natsu couldn't help but be very perplexed as to what was going on now, and his brows furrowed in confusion when he saw his daughter open her mouth. Nashi screwed her chubby face up, squeezing her eyes shut as she was clearly trying to make an effort to do something.

Then it happened.

"Pa...pa-ba..."

Nashi's struggled words bubbled out as a string of dribble and clumsy gurgles.

Natsu's heart dropped from his chest and on to the floor, he beamed incredulously at his baby girl. He couldn't believe it; his sense of hearing must have failed him this time...but it couldn't have because he hadn't heard her voice before now and it sounded so new and it was so sweet to his ears. He couldn't believe it but he had to...Nashi just spoke...her first word. The pink-haired dragon slayer beamed as he grabbed Nashi's underarms in both hands and swept her up so he was holding her in front of him.

Nashi looked happily at her father, proud of her accomplishment.

Natsu's eyes watered and his lower lip quivered as he gasped in both amazement and joy.

"O-Oh my gosh! You just...you just said 'Papa'! You just said your first word...! Or close enough."

Natsu bounced Nashi up and down in his arms as he meandered towards a nearby rocking chair and plopped himself down in the seat. Once seated, he brought Nashi close to him and proceeded to nuzzle her with every ounce of affection he could. He loved Nashi so much and, while he knew that he would mess up every now and then, he was determined that he would raise her to the best of his abilities and he wouldn't let her down.

He rubbed the tip of his nose against her chin as he crooned gently to her.

"I'm so proud of you, sweetheart!"

He sighed with tired relief as he wrapped his strong arms around the infant, father and daughter smooshing their cheeks together, and a short silence brewed between the two salmon-pink-haired wizards until Natsu spoke up in a goofy baby voice.

"...Y-You forgive daddy for being a big meanie, right?"

Nashi cooed and gurgled in confirmation as she snuggled into the crook of his neck.

Natsu chuckled at his baby's adorability.

"D'awww. Thanks, baby girl..."

He sighed as he added on.

"...and I'll apologise to uncle Gray, Happy and mama tomorrow."

* * *

**A/N: Heres the end of this short story.**

**I made it specially for Fathers day.**

**Plus I hadn't made a Nalu parental fic in awhile so I thought that I should make one.**

**I hope you enjoyed, guys.**

**Happy fathers day!**

**-Chloemcg **


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